Not as Those Without Hope

It was the wee hours of the morning in mid-January, 1974, when the phone rang at 3056 West Madison. Frank Nickel answered and heard the anxious voice of his oldest son, Charles, on the other end of the line.

"The baby's started coming, one foot is already out, what do I do?"

"I'm on my way," Frank said.

After instructing his son to call for an ambulance, Frank rushed to Charles' home, arriving before the ambulance did. Together they struggled to deliver the child, but since it was a breech birth, it was very difficult and took much time. I do not remember if the baby was born at home, in the ambulance ride or at the hospital.

For two days, Angela Kay, fought for life in the newborn nursery at the hospital. She had fluid in her lungs, inhaled during the extended delivery. I stood at the nursery window and wept, watching her little chest heave involuntarily in shuddering spasms as she gasped for air. I begged God to spare her, but her lungs were too compromised.

I listened as my family went through the various stages of grief, anger and blame. Why didn't the doctor know the baby was breech? Why did it take so long for the ambulance to arrive? Why were the ambulance attendants not better trained in labour and delivery?

My parents were heartbroken, not only for the loss of a granddaughter, but for the pain brought to bear on their first son and his wife. They knew the truths of scripture, but this was the first untimely death of a direct family member. But it was not the last.

I had just turned 16. I don't remember anyone speaking to me directly about this loss. I don't even remember if there was a funeral. I was present with the family when I wasn't at school (did I even go to school during this time?) but I knew nothing about dealing with grief.

Mom and Dad were already reeling from a fallout with their son, Jack, who had cut off contact with them in the prior year. I witnessed first-hand the anguish, heartbreak and grief my parents experienced as a result of the severed relationship. They prayed daily for all their children and extended family, but spent many more hours in supplication for Jack, and for guidance in how to appeal for reconciliation.

But Jack was out of touch. He had enlisted in the Marines and told them not to contact him. The enlistment was a further blow for our parents, raised as conscientious objectors who are opposed to war because of deeply held convictions against killing.

As you can read in yesterday's post, Jack became the second family member to face an untimely death, less than two months after Angela. How does a family heal from such devastating loss?

Yesterday, I found my father's answer to that question in his own words, written April 2, 1974 to those who had expressed condolences:

Dear Friends,

"Perplexed but not in despair." (2 Cor. 4:8)

Please accept our sincere thanks for your expressions of sympathy. The painful losses of Angela Kay, new-born daughter of Charles and Carol, on January 16, and then our third son, Jack Daniel, on March 2, have both resulted in the free-flowing of a fountain of tears. However, we have not questioned God's faithfulness or compassion. His Word has become more relevant and His presence more real, as the "peace that passeth understanding" has filtered through the shadows and settled as dew on our troubled minds. We are told to "lay up treasure in heaven." Now God Himself, has chosen to "lay up" two choice treasures for us. Need we say that heaven is nearer since they are there? How precious is the assurance of seeing them again!

Angela Kay died as a result of breathing complications after somewhat less than two days of life. She was a beautiful baby of nearly nine pounds. We do not know what caused Jack's car to leave the highway and strike a tree. He would have been 26 on the day of his funeral. His testimony for the Lord through the years, both in life and service, has blessed countless lives, both in our nation and in Canada,--also in many foreign countries by recording. His clear tenor voice thrilled us again and again, and his pleasant personality attracted many, wherever he went. He often quoted Psalm 16:11, "Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore." His wife, Karen, resides with her parents presently at Enid, Oklahoma, and will possibly take up further educational training.

Your prayers, and expression of love have meant so much. May God bless you for them.

Sincerely,

The Frank Nickel Family

I also consider how my parents weren't aware or able to help me grieve while they were overcome with their own grief. I saw more "brave face" from my parents than I did sadness. I do not doubt that they grieved much in private, away from my eyes. So as an adult, through the recent reading and research on grieve and through participation in a GriefShare support group, I've learned the critical importance of giving myself permission to sit with the feelings of sadness as they rise.

Because I believe in the resurrection, I do not grieve as those who have no hope. But I still grieve. One of the ways I find healing is taking time to think, pray, journal or even blog about my losses with tenderness and honesty. I am no longer in despair, and after I publish this, I will go on with my life, which is filled with wonder, laughter and peace with the occasional bouts of sadness. But I have spent the past six years going through a number of steps to get to this point.

My encouragement to you, if bereavement comes to your family, is this: don't squelch your path back to wholeness by ignoring your grief. Take the time you need to express your grief in a safe place, a support group, a grief counsellor, reading good books (I've collected a list for you here). But while you are doing so, please also be aware of the younger ones around you who don't know how to do this and may not understand what is happening. It's important to give them comfort and reassurance that is age-appropriate, and to let them see your sadness.

If you've been through this, what other things have helped you process your grief in a healthy way?




Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash
Text added by Joyce Rempel on Word Swag

Snoring, Smiling, and Snoopy (the dog)

It's not just snoring. It can cause high blood pressure, insomnia, behavioral issues, heart attack, heart failure and stroke. Sleep apnea can kill you. So when I lose the very thing that helps, I'm in trouble.

My family of origin has a genetic predisposition toward sleep apnea, where you basically stop breathing multiple times per night. Five of us have been diagnosed, others show symptoms they have, so far, successfully ignored. According to Mayo Clinic, an estimated 12 million American adults have obstructive sleep apnea, and many of them are undiagnosed.

In my moderate case, a "mandibular advancement splint" gives a degree of relief. While it sounds ominous, this is basically a dental appliance, a "night guard" similar to those used to stop teeth grinding or manage TMJ pain. Mine sets the lower jaw forward, opens up the airway, minimizes obstruction, and keeps me breathing. This is a very good thing.

Unfortunately, the splint is expensive and not covered by our provincial health care. Costs range in the thousands of dollars. The employer's insurance plan fortunately covers most of that cost for the initial splint, but not for loss.

One evening, a decade ago, my splint is not in its proper place. Now, it is not uncommon for me to set things in odd places (cue laugh track from Henry), so I patiently search. The most likely locations turn up nothing, the level of frustration rises; I scour every room in the house, nothing! I finally dig through the garbage, where it had once been found rolled up in a tissue, but not this time. I give up.

How could I lose it? $480 to replace! Oddly, the song going thru my head at that point said, "God will provide."

After the fitting for a new one, the dentist's office calls: "Insurance covered 90 percent. All you owe is $48!"

I share my happy ending, and my friend Heather (the Fairy Dog Mother, who dog-sits for vacationing friends) tells me she once found her night guard in the mouth of one of the dogs she was sitting. Fortunately, she was able to still use it -- after a thorough cleaning.

That triggers a memory between my mom and our family dog, Snoopy, who Mom barely tolerated for the sake of the boys. Mom wore a partial plate which was somewhat ill-fitting, so she'd occasionally remove it while eating. One day, Snoopy gets hold of Mom's partial plate, thinks it's a chew toy, and proceeds to break off a piece. Mom is so flustered, she grabs the two parts, examines them and then cries, "I don't think she's ruined it!" and pops the larger part in her mouth.

And then her eyes grow wide as she spits it out and splutters in horror: "I didn't wash it!"

After much scrubbing and rinsing, she fits it back in place. Emerging from the washroom, she exclaims, "Well, praise the Lord and thank the dog, it's more comfortable than before!" She used it for the rest of her life.

Fast forward to today. My splint is aggravating the roots of a molar, so I've not been wearing it since August. As you can imagine, my sleep has been affected. The next step is a root canal, and other dental procedures before we proceed to a refitting. This time, as a retiree, there is no employer's medical benefit. So I again am singing that song, "God will provide." I don't know how, but I'll trust God to figure it out.

One final note. If you snore a lot, and/or think you may have sleep apnea, consult your doctor. A sleep study will follow. This article may help in choosing your best route of management.




Cover Photo by Megan te Boekhorst on Unsplash
Dog Photo: "Snoopy" from the family archives, 1970.

In the beginning...

Sometimes I think I would like to go back to the beginning, to tell my story because I keep seeing posters and blogs and quotes that tell me how important my story is and how much it needs to be shared so that others can benefit. (Yours too!) Yet I’d rather curl up in the fetal position under the duvet and sleep it off. My story includes stupidity, joy, success and failure, shame and forgiven sin, brokenness and healing, struggle and dis-ease, sickness and health, riches and revoked credit cards, conflict, reconciliation, addiction, freedom, rage, serenity, horrific loss and a heart overflowing with gratitude. Yes, my story covers the gamut, as does yours. But I should start at the beginning.

Trouble is, how do I know? Where is the beginning?

Is it where I was born the youngest and only girl to a family already full with seven rowdy rollicking boys? To a preacher dad and a would-have-been-a-missionary-to-Africa mom?

To that house on 3056 W. Madison that now has been renovated and belongs to another family that somehow decided six bedrooms and a two-room annex would suit them? 

circa 1965

circa 2000

circa November 2013

Was the beginning of my life that 19-year family road-trip every weekend and every summer to sing in 200 churches a year and stay in as many different homes of total strangers and come out of it aware of how completely normal dysfunction can be?

Or is the beginning when I went to school at Westport in grade one because kindergarten was optional? Where I fell in love with reading in Miss Snyder’s grade three class, learned to sing “Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious” in the hallway, discover that sweeping compound can clean up vomit, learned to dislike corn from a can, forgot to collect the milk money from the machine to put in the safe and it was stolen, prayed every day that I could learn how to “just be nice”, discovered how much those soft red dodgeballs hurt when they hit your face, how good the honeysuckle and gooseberries tasted on the other side of the playground fence, where I was one of the best female softball players, often the fastest girl runner and had my first poem published on the grade six bulletin board?

Westport School

Or was Junior High at Study the beginning, since it was mercifully close to Dairy Queen and the donut factory which we only stopped at occasionally after Wednesday night prayer meeting, but school ended up being a place where I made a complete and total fool of myself in front of the entire student body trying to be a clown? Or where I played piano accompaniment for the national anthem at an assembly, shaking and terrified and didn’t make a fool of myself but only mom came to watch, not dad, and where I won a spelling bee and played guitar at our grad while singing a duet with my best friend?

Harry P. Study Jr. High School

Or was high school the beginning? A freshman while my brother was a senior, learning to drive his ’71 3-speed Camaro, where I took three years of Home Ec as a practical science instead of natural sciences because my first year biology and mutilating that poor frog didn’t help me understand anatomy at all? Where I was told about erections in cooking class from the senior girl with whom I later double dated? Where Mrs. Bilyeu let me sing solos and trios and madrigals and how the trio with Diana, Lori and I got #1 ratings at State Music Festival but my solos never made it past City Festival? Where I fell in love every year with a different boyfriend and I worked part time and kept a 4.0 GPA and then got robbed at gunpoint in my driveway after grad while on my only date with the valedictorian? Where my friend told me I was part of the popular crowd but I didn’t know that? (Isn’t perspective an odd thing?)

Central High School

Or was it the church I attended, recommitted my life to Jesus, got baptised and was eventually married in? Where I learned to play percussion in the band and sing alto in the choir and where a Junior High Sunday School teacher gave me The Way (a Living Bible paraphrase) which kept me company every single night for the next seven years and moved me to want to be a missionary and taught me that I am complete in Christ? Where some in the youth group were using drugs but I never knew until one of them got convicted during revival meetings and decided to give his joint away.

Or was the beginning going to college, thinking I was finally out from under my parent’s strict rules and discover that the college rules were worse? Where I became a rebel while studying why I believe what I believe, learned which liquor I did and didn’t like, and also against the rules - watched my first movie, Camelot, on a 70mm screen? Can I just say Lancelot (Franco Nero) was magnificent? (Apparently Vanessa Redgrave thought so, too.)

Or was the beginning when I began to live in community with others at college, in the pseudo-sorority house with my brother’s ex-girlfriend, and four years in the dormitory both with and without roommates and living across the hall from two Canadian girls who are still my friends? Or was it singing in oratorios, concerts and tours with the Chorale, where I first did an air for alto (He was despised) which brought some to tears, being the first one to solo in radio chapel with a recorded accompaniment track, or was it being in the quartet that traveled to recruit new students and counsel at camps? Or was it becoming a youth leader in my brother’s church clear across town, singing in their choir and introducing one of my young people to my boyfriend’s best friend and they get married five years later and are my friends to this day? Was it having a new job every semester, cleaning houses, toilets and soiled laundry for demanding rich women to pay tuition, or selling office supplies or making photo copies or monitoring alarm systems or serving in a bridal salon? (Completely out of my depth but did I ever get a good deal on my wedding dress!) Or was the beginning realizing that at college, I learned to believe for myself what I found to be true about God?

Or could “going back to the beginning” be the day I said yes to Brent’s proposal, finished my degree in music and then married him and moved to Canada? Yes, this seems more like the beginning of “my” story. For there and then, I was without family, without friends, and began – for the first time – to live life as an individual and as an adult.

Now that we’ve determined the beginning (thank you for sticking with me this far, it’s helped!), I think about where the story ends. As any writer knows, for good story you need a beginning, middle and end, with significant conflict and crisis to add interest and tension, with a satisfactory resolution or surprise twist. Well, I have all of that. Some you know, much you don’t. What to include and what to keep silent – this is the dilemma of the memoir. Readers tend to shy away from those who indiscriminately open their emotional trench coat to reveal every shocking, naked detail of their story. Can we say “TMI”?

So the story ends, we assume, with my death. So I can only write about my life up till now and how the life verse I chose from the epistle to the Philippians when I was in college seems quite appropriate to interject at this point:

“God, who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.”

(my paraphrase of Phil. 1:6)

God continues to shape, delight, love, teach, guide, relax with and comfort me. I trust in that, and am grateful for the place in which I find myself at this moment, despite trauma, despite being orphaned and widowed, despite gaining and losing jobs, buying and selling homes, and figuring out how to be an adult in varying degrees of success and failure. 

I am healthier now physically, emotionally and spiritually than I have ever been. Primarily because of God's grace and love, and partly because of an intentional practice of acceptance and gratitude (which isn't constant, but getting better). That brings me to the best attitude of my life so far, despite still struggling with ghosts from my past. I have a wonderful future ahead, my son getting married to a lovely young woman, my new husband and love sharing life with me for, oh, 50 years or so and then we'll re-negotiate...

I will begin at the beginning – at some point – and tell my story, but God says there’s still some “tweaking” that needs to be done before that day.

Thanks for being my friend. You’re part of my story and I am part of yours. Let’s write better stories together, yes?

To be continued…